November 2015 Animals A Brief Zoology of Cinema

Press Information
October | November 2015
Animals
A Brief Zoology of Cinema
In the kingdom of cinema-creatures, the human animal sets the tone. It dominates the action,
elevates itself above the other animals, delegates them to certain tasks, and never under any
circumstance grants them access to the camera or the editing room. Thus, the cinema of ants
(Phase IV), birds (Uccellacci e uccellini) and fish (Leviathan) always remains a cinema of humans
– even though we often like to imagine how it would look the other way around (Planet of the Apes
provides an uncomfortable glimpse).
Alongside the zoo, where similar power structures prevail, the cinema is the visual medium that
most clearly marks the accelerated transition of Western societies into the age of "vanishing
nature." In the late 19th and 20th centuries, animals gradually disappeared from the contexts of
everyday life and work (as they did, successively, from the wilderness) only to reappear as pets, as
capitalist kitsch, in the form of big-game trophies, or for that matter, as zoo or movie animals.
Cultural studies have adequately shown how in that process animals were utilized and treated:
somewhat differently than in the food or clothing industries but under the same ideological
conditions.
This process of alienation in the modern age, as formulated by John Berger in his influential essay,
"Why Look At Animals?", not only facilitated the increased systematic violence against animals, but
also a new awareness of their suffering – from questions about their preservation and the dignity of
animals to current debates about animal rights. Today, there is a hestitation with respect to
animals, and the cinema (regardless of the strong anthropomorphism it has promoted in its
depiction of animals) has no small role in this development. Because in the realm of
photographic-cinematic images, the limits of the human viewpoint and of man’s centrality also
become visible. As André Bazin has shown, the technology of cinema unfolds a world in which
animals and things can exist independently from mankind – or on an equal basis with humans.
Which is why, to this day, animals in movies have preserved their sting, their vitality, their
sometimes darkly provocative, sometimes enlightening power. Even more so if one looks beyond
the globally dominant genres of animal cinema and TV (such as the wildlife documentary), focusing
instead on the exceptional richness of those fictional, essayistic, experimental mirror images that
independently minded human animals have created by looking at other animals. This is the
universe that our "Brief Zoology of Cinema" attempts to trace: animals and their images look back
at us. And show us (as constantly threatened animals/images) what our society and our forms of
living together are all about, including some of the boundaries and illusions of humanity as such. In
other cases, they lead us (as constantly threatening animals/images) into the realm of myth,
monsters and mutants. Their precarious status is also our own.
From Étienne-Jules Marey’s proto-cinematic falling cat in the 1880s to Kelsey Goldych’s desktoproaming Trash Cat of 2015; from Godzilla to Balthazar; from Winsor McCay's animated mosquito
to Aardman Animations’ Creature Comforts; from Cocteau's man-beast through Truffaut's wolf-boy
to the human lab-animals in Alain Resnais’ Mon oncle d’Amerique; from the red fox in works by
Powell/Pressburger, Arne Sucksdorff and Wes Anderson to the sperm whale as seen by John
Huston and Chris Marker: these are only a few of the many diverse arcs, connections, and
zoological as well as film historical affinities and contrasts that characterize the fabric of this
retrospective.
Its goal is not academic containment, but radical openness to a "crypto-zoological" wilderness:
that of the cinema and its categories. As is triggers our curiosity, visual pleasure, reflexivity or
sheer identification, it is often quite irrelevant whether the respective movie animal was trained or
"caught in the act", invented or "real", effectively reproduced or just drawn with a few lines. All the
more clearly, however, it can demonstrate to us how messy and impure the medium actually is:
when the "documentary image" of a large herd of cows or buffalo stampedes across the screen in
an elaborately constructed western – or when all roles in a studio-set narrative are played by live
animals as in Jean Tourane's Une fée... pas comme les autres. Or the other way around, as in
Battle at Kruger, when a shaky amateur camera on a safari records the most fantastically epic
battle ever “staged” for a movie.
With its 140 selected works, this exhibition is as comprehensive as possible within a
representational space that will always remain immeasurable. Because the "Lives of Others"
which are being evoked here – between horror fables and screwball comedy, studies of society
and thrillers, jungle dramas and Direct Cinema – amount in some ways to an allegory of cinema
itself: an apparatus (“biograph”) which, for many film theorists, has functioned as a kind of Ersatz
animal in the modern age. A machine in which animism, animation and animality all collaborate to
create artifacts: lasting works of human culture. There is, of course, a much simpler and more
fundamental way to put it, as Ludwig Wittgenstein did: "In all great art exists a wild animal: tamed."
Animals is this year’s joint retrospective of the Austrian Film Museum and the Viennale.
We are grateful to the many individual and archival supporters of the program, in particular
Elif Rongen and the EYE Film Institute, Amsterdam. A list of all films presented in the
framework of the show can be found below.
October 16 to November 30, 2015
Joseph Cornell
Utopia Parkway: It is from this fittingly poetic-sounding address in Queens, NY, that the art of
Joseph Cornell (1903-1972) emerged. Although he scarcely left New York during his lifetime,
Cornell's work was strongly influenced by his interest in the old continent, astronomy and eras long
past. Cornell was intrigued with all things distant; but instead of starting to travel he created
his own cosmos: "This is a man who would look at the stars and dream about the
mechanics of the universe." (Walter Hopps)
Cornell is best known for his so-called boxes, in which he arranged various photos and objects.
The proximity to Marcel Duchamp and his boîtes-en-valise is not only a conceptual, but also a
personal kinship. As an autodidact, Cornell in the 1930s began to create his own work: the early
collages were influenced by Surrealism but also by his own passionate collecting activity; soon the
spectrum shifted towards objects and films.
Cornell's relationship to film was highly ambivalent. The first screening (1936) of one of his films
ended traumatically due to the indignant reaction of Salvador Dali, so that Cornell from that
moment on only rarely and reluctantly agreed to show his films in public. Rose Hobart, his first
and best known film, is dedicated to the actress of the same name. As in several later works
which feature imagery of stars like Lauren Bacall and Hedy Lamarr, this early found-footage film
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focuses primarily on Rose Hobart’s scenes from the 1931 ‘B’ movie East of Borneo. The result is
an atmospherically condensed portrait, which communicates through simple but effective
manipulation of the original context, creating a strong sense of irony and haunted-ness along the
way.
Cornell's film work is difficult to classify and even accurate dating is often difficult. The early
collage-films from the 1930s were mostly completed much later, with the help of Lawrence Jordan,
who was Cornell's assistant in the late 60s. In the mid-1950s, Stan Brakhage and Rudy Burckhardt
acted as cinematographers under Cornell's direction – and the material generated by these
wanderings through New York was incorporated into Cornell's works as well as their own films.
Revision, recombination, delegation: these practices can be found throughout Cornell's
entire oeuvre. Certain themes, motifs, and film fragments emerge in varying forms on several
occasions, most clearly in the Children's Trilogy, a series of dark and very troubling "fairy tales." In
Untitled (The Wool Collage) – the most recent discovery among the works he left behind – several
sequences from other works also return in different shape.
Annette Michelson refers to the parallels between the historical development of cinema and the
biography of the artist: from a cinema of attractions to the narrative film to sound film; this
genealogy is crystalized in Cornell's films, which often appear – intentionally – anachronistic
while unfolding their enigmatic spell.
A joint project of the Austrian Film Museum and the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
The exhibition "Fernweh" at KHM, which shows Cornell's pictorial work for the first time in
Austria, takes place from October 20, 2015 to January 10, 2016. The Film Museum's
collection of Cornell's films will be augmented by loans from New York’s Museum of
Modern Art and Anthology Film Archives.
November 11 and 12, 2015
Manoel de Oliveira
The Music of Vanished Things
When Manoel de Oliveira died in the spring of this year, he was busy preparing a new project.
What else would one be doing at the age of 106 besides simply making another film?
Especially if one's career only got started at an age when most people are retiring...
However, De Oliveira was an icon not only because of his age. His work is rich in connections
to the history and literature of his Portuguese homeland, and it marked one of those unique and
often baffling positions in modern cinema that the European film industry has tolerated less
and less over the past 30 years. With his debut feature from 1942, De Oliveira was one of the
first to represent this kind of cinema – and he will also have been one of the last.
For Manoel De Oliveira, born in Porto in 1908, things happened a little differently than in most
other directing careers. His first film, a silent study from 1931, was a thoughtful portrait of his
hometown and its river (Douro, Faina Fluvial), but it took until his third feature in the early 1970s, O
Passado e o Presente, that he began to regularly produce full-length works. In the intervening four
decades, he was mainly an "amateur" – his central occupation was the family business while he
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also cultivated hobbies such as auto racing. Added to this was the Salazar regime, which De
Oliveira did not want to involve himself with more than was necessary. As a member of the elite, a
dandy and a Catholic-conservative modernist, he found the local fascists suspect and
reprehensible. Like the short film A Caça (1963), his first two features – the proto-neorealistic
children's fable Aniki Bóbó (1942) and the colorful passion play Acto da Primavera (1963) – can be
read as critiques of this state and its cinematic self-portraits.
When he achieved his international breakthrough with the ironic adaptation of Camilo Castelo
Branco's classic, Amor de Perdição (1979), Manoel de Oliveira was about 70 years old. Not long
after, he began to be honored for his life's work – with the assumption that he would probably soon
pass away. It seems that he, himself, didn’t expect to live very long, because by 1982 he had
already created his cinematic will and testament, Visita ou Memórias e Confissões, that he
insisted be shown only after his death (it premiered in May 2015 at the Cannes Film Festival). In
the 1990s, however, he found a producer, Paulo Branco, who would transform De Oliveira
into an international “institution”, enabling him to make a new movie almost every year – often
featuring major stars such as Catherine Deneuve, Michel Piccoli, Marcello Mastroianni, Irene
Papas and John Malkovich.
And the director grew as possibilities grew around him. As his composer once said: For De Oliveira
each film must offer something new – an experiment, a new beginning, an adventure. Which is
also why his works cannot be reduced to a common denominator. In his films one can find mighty
melodramas like Francisca or Vale Abraão, as well as cryptic-crafty comedies (Je rentre à la
maison, Singularidades de uma Rapariga Loura), poetic essays (Porto da Minha Infância) and
cinephile games (Belle toujours). The soundings of his own position in the world (Viagem ao
Princípio do Mundo) are juxtaposed with musings on the fate of Portugal („Non“, ou A vã Glória
de Mandar) – where Portugal for him represented the old world: Europe. He also loved to change
style and intonation, mood and bearing, often right in the middle of a film. With De Oliveira one
must always be prepared for anything, and should never assume where the journey might end.
Manoel de Oliveira was an exception, a deviation beyond compare: always both old and young at
the same time, a citizen of a lost era and of one yet to come. "In life, a loss always means a new
beginning. Art is then no more than the 'music of vanished things.'"
The homage to Manoel de Oliveira is a joint venture between the Film Museum and the
Viennale and has been organized with the generous support of the Cinemateca Portuguesa.
Filmmaker Pedro Costa was invited by the Viennale to select films from De Oliveira's vast
oeuvre. After the festival, these are also shown at the Film Museum, complimented by
several additional works. In total, the exhibition will screen 25 short and feature-length
films. On November 13 and 14, José Manuel Costa, Director of the Cinemateca Portuguesa,
will speak at the Filmmuseum, discussing and introducing several films by De Oliveira.
November 13 to 30, 2015
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In person
Clemens von Wedemeyer
The film works and installations by Clemens von Wedemeyer, born in Göttingen in 1974, are
contemporary in the best sense of the word: insistent and curious, they seek places where the
present becomes visible and tangible. At the same time, they conjure up images which reflect
on their own origin and a history of visual media. Silberhöhe measures the juxtaposition of a
worker's flat and a new development in Halle an der Saale alongside the setting of Michelangelo
Antonioni's L'eclisse. Starting from the monastery at Breitenau, the feature-length film Muster
alternates between three different time periods and in the process brings to light the historic
sediments of the place as well as showing how its design developed in the years 1945, 1970 and
2012.
Von Wedemeyer, who in 2006 won the German competition at the Oberhausen International Short
Film Festival, and who has also had work featured at Documenta and various Biennials, is
primarily recognized in the field of visual art. But his oeuvre exhibits an intense proximity to the
cinema that reaches far beyond mere referrences. His works immerse themselves deeply in
film history and thoroughly investigate aesthetic figures of cinema: the cinematic construction of
"point of view" in Von Gegenüber enables a cartography of the Münster train station square, while
Found Footage is defined by the precise examination of film fragments of foreign cultures, people
and places. In Otjesd and Procession, political scenarios are analyzed through long sequence
shots.
Procession is also part of the tri-part project, The Cast, which represents the most condensed
instance of this approach. Images of a sculpture workshop at Cinecittà are interwoven with a
found-footage work about statues in movies and about the revolt of extras during the filming of Ben
Hur: the reality depicted in this film has its own origin in cinema.
With three programs, the Film Museum presents a cross-section of the artist's work for the
first time in Austria. Clemens von Wedemeyer, who is currently working on his latest
project in Vienna, will be present for all screenings. The series is being organized in the
framework of the 2015 Vienna Art Week.
November 19 and 20, 2015
For more information and photos, please visit www.filmmuseum.at or contact:
Alessandra Thiele, [email protected], phone 43-1-533 70 54 ext. 22
Eszter Kondor, [email protected], phone 43-1-533 70 54 ext. 12
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Animals. List of Selected Works
Clash of the Wolves 1925, Noel M. Smith
Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness 1927, Merian C. Cooper & Ernest B. Schoedsack
Tarzan the Ape Man 1932, W.S. Van Dyke
King Kong 1933, Merian C. Cooper & Ernest B. Schoedsack
Bringing Up Baby 1938, Howard Hawks
+ Gare! Les Lions! (Achtung! Löwen!) 1912, Lux
Bambi 1942, David Hand / Disney
+ The Private Life of a Cat 1945/46, Alexander Hammid & Maya Deren
Lassie Come Home 1943, Fred M. Wilcox
La Belle et la bête 1946, Jean Cocteau
+ Red Hot Riding Hood 1943, Tex Avery
Red River 1948, Howard Hawks
Gone to Earth 1950, Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger
Umberto D. 1952, Vittorio De Sica
+ Cani dietro le sbarre 1955, Gillo Pontecorvo
Mogambo 1953, John Ford
+ Ein Fabeltier fliegt nach Deutschland 1954, Michael Grzimek
Gojira (Godzilla) 1954, Ishiro Honda
+ Mysteries of The Deep 1959, Ben Sharpsteen / Disney
Moby Dick 1956, John Huston
+ Vive la baleine 1972, Chris Marker & Mario Ruspoli
Good-bye, My Lady 1956, William A. Wellman
The Last Hunt 1956, Richard Brooks
+ Chasse aux phoques dans la mer de la Tasmanie (Seehundjagd in Tasmanien) 1910, Pathé
Une fée... pas comme les autres 1957, Jean Tourane
India, Matri Bhumi 1957-59, Roberto Rossellini
+ Pastori di Orgosolo 1958, Vittorio De Seta
Koiya koi nasuna koi (The Mad Fox) 1962, Tomu Uchida
The Birds 1963, Alfred Hitchcock
+ Glimpses of Bird Life 1910, Oliver Pike
Vidas secas (Trockenes Leben) 1963, Nelson Pereira dos Santos
Au hasard Balthazar 1966, Robert Bresson
Uccellacci e uccellini (Große Vögel – kleine Vögel) 1966, Pier Paolo Pasolini
+ De Vogeltjesvanger (Der Vögleinfänger) 1925, N.V. Orion Filmfabriek
Planet of the Apes 1968, Franklin J. Schaffner
+ Rat Life and Diet in North America 1968, Joyce Wieland
Kes 1969, Ken Loach
Gaav (Die Kuh) 1969, Dariush Mehrjui
L’Enfant sauvage 1970, Francois Truffaut
Le Cochon 1970, Jean Eustache & J.-M. Barjol
+ Le Sang des bètes 1949, Georges Franju
+ Bataille sur le grand fleuve 1951, Jean Rouch
Phase IV 1974, Saul Bass
+ La Peine du talion 1906, Gaston Velle
+ La Chenille de la carotte 1911, Pathé
Vase de noces 1974, Thierry Zeno
+ De poes (Die Katze) 1968, Johan van der Keuken
Primate 1974, Frederick Wiseman
+ Grigio 1957, Ermanno Olmi & Pier Paolo Pasolini
Koko, le gorille qui parle / Koko, a Talking Gorilla 1978, Barbet Schroeder
+ Last Lost 1996, Eve Heller
Agraharathil Kazhuthai (Ein Esel im Brahmanen-Dorf) 1978, John Abraham
+ The Corridor 2010, Sarah Vanagt
Mon oncle d’Amerique 1980, Alain Resnais
+ L'Hippocampe, ou 'Cheval marin' 1935, Jean Painlevé
The Animals Film 1981, Victor Schonfeld & Myriam Alaux
+ Das boxende Känguruh 1895, Max Skladanowsky
White Dog 1982, Samuel Fuller
+ Sid 1998, Jeffrey Scher
A Zed & Two Noughts 1985, Peter Greenaway
+ Tiere ohne Feind und Furcht 1953, Michael Grzimek
I Do Not Know What It Is I Am Like 1986, Bill Viola
+ Le Cinéma lent et les movements rapides des animaux 1915, Pathé
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The Fly 1986, David Cronenberg
+ Cheese Mites 1903, Charles Urban
+ The Unclean World 1903, Percy Stow
+ The Strength and Agility of Insects 1911, Percy Smith
+ Les Mouches 1913, Eclipse
Cane Toads: An Unnatural History 1988, Mark Lewis
Tierische Liebe 1995, Ulrich Seidl
+ Madame Babylas aime les animaux 1911, Alfred Machin
Babe: Pig in the City 1998, George Miller
Best in Show 2000, Christopher Guest
+ Queer Pets 1912, Percy Smith
Sen to Chichiro no kamikakushi (Chihiros Reise ins Zauberland) 2001, Hayao Miyazaki
Grizzly Man 2005, Werner Herzog
Fantastic Mr. Fox 2009, Wes Anderson
+ En kluven värld (Eine gespaltene Welt) 1948, Arne Sucksdorff
Leviathan 2012, Lucien Castaing-Taylor & Verena Paravel
+ Visvangst met aalscholvers in Nederlands Indië (Fischfang mit Kormoranen) 1925
+ Pescherecci 1958, Vittorio De Seta
SHORT FILM PROGRAM 1: TIER- UND MENSCHENGÄRTEN
Plackerei Freude Leid oder Licht und Schatten auf der Farm des Zirkus Bostock 1911
Creature Comforts 1989, Nick Park
The New Architecture of the London Zoo 1936/37, László Moholy-Nagy
Carousel – Animal Opera ca. 1938, Joseph Cornell
Zoo 1962, Bert Haanstra
Microcultural Incidents at 10 Zoos 1971, Ray L. Birdwhistell
Nashörner 1987, Karl Kels
La Nuit tombe sur la ménagerie 2010, Nicolas Philibert
SHORT FILM PROGRAM 2: ANIMALI │ CRIMINALI
Das Erbe 1935, Cartl Hartmann / NSDAP
Electrocuting an Elephant 1903, Edison Co.
Chasse à la panthère 1909, Alfred Machin
Unsere Afrikareise 1961-66, Peter Kubelka
Der letzte Schrei des Dschungels [Trailer for Ultime grida dalla savana] 1975
Animali criminali 1994, Yervant Gianikian & Angela Ricci Lucchi
Fütterung von Riesenschlangen 1911, Komet-Film
Cat Fishin’ 1947, William Hanna & Joseph Barbera
Gallodrome 1989, Romuald Karmakar
Bully for Bugs 1953, Chuck Jones
Battle at Kruger 2004/07, David Budzinski & Jason Schlosberg
SHORT FILM PROGRAM 3: DER GESANG DER TIERE
Gus Visser and His Singing Duck 1925, Theodor Case
Le Vampire 1939-45, Jean Painlevé
Hurdy-Gurdy Hare 1950, Robert McKimson
One Froggy Evening 1955, Chuck Jones
Berlin Horse 1970, Malcolm Le Grice
Vremena goda (Die Jahreszeiten) 1975, Artavazd Pelešjan
Boundin' 2003, Bud Luckey
SLON Tango 1993, Chris Marker
C’mon Babe (Danke schön) 1988, Sharon Sandusky
Careless Reef Part 4: Marsa Abu Galawa 2004, Gerard Holthuis
Convulsion (Pirkus) 1998, Chen Sheinberg
SHORT FILM PROGRAM 4: ANIMATED ANIMALS
Mest’ kinematograficheskogo operatora (Die Rache des Kameramanns) 1911/12, Ladislas Starewitch
How a Mosquito Operates 1912, Winsor McCay
Africa Before Dark 1928, Walt Disney
Slaphappy Lion 1947, Tex Avery
L‘Anitra famosa 1954 + Smart Export 1959, Jószef Misik / Geesink Studio
By Word of Mouse 1954, Fritz Freleng
Whoa, Be-Gone! 1958, Chuck Jones
Yozhik v tumane (Igel im Nebel) 1975, Jurij Norstein
Creature Comforts 1989, Nick Park
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For the Birds 2000, Ralph Eggleston
Shadow Cuts 2010, Martin Arnold
SHORT FILM PROGRAM 5: HUND UND KATZ UND GROMIT – 130 JAHRE KINO
La Chronophotographie sur pellicule / La Chute du chat 1888-94, Étienne-Jules Marey
RaumZeitHund 2010, Nikolaus Eckhard
Meissner Porzellan! Lebende Skulpturen der Diodattis im Berliner Wintergarten 1912-14, Gaumont
Dejeuner du chat 1896, Cinématographe Lumière
Famille de jeunes chiens 1912, Gaumont
Les Chiens savants 1909, Pathé
Dog Factory 1904, Edwin S. Porter
A Little Hero 1913, George Nichols / Keystone
King-Size Canary 1947, Tex Avery
Cat’s Cradle 1959, Stan Brakhage
Spelling Lesson + Dog Duet 1973-76, William Wegman
Dog Baseball 1986, William Wegman
A Close Shave 1995, Nick Park
Nine Lives: The Eternal Moment of Now 2001, Jay Rosenblatt
Chat écoutant la musique 1990, Chris Marker
Trash Cat 2015, Kelsey Goldych
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